A radio communication system generally includes a transmitter, a receiver, an antenna and appropriate terminal equipment.
Classical radio communication systems use frequency division multiplexing as a strategy to split up and share the available radio frequency bandwidth for use by different parties. Frequency division multiplexing may support a radio communication system staying on a single frequency or hopping between frequencies. Modern radio communication systems support frequency division multiplexing as well as time division multiple access, which divides up a radio frequency band by time.
Time division multiple access (TDMA) is a channel access method for shared medium networks, which allows several users to share the same frequency channel by dividing the signal into different time slots. Users transmit in rapid succession, one after the other, each using a different time slot. This allows multiple stations to share the same transmission medium (e.g., radio frequency channel) while using only a part of the channel capacity. TDMA is employed in a number of military and commercial communication protocols.